Coming face-to-face with a three-metre shark is an experience not too many people are keen to have. But in Australia there are a number of places where you can pay good money to pull on a rubber wetsuit and take the plunge with these fearsome creatures.
If your kids are shark obsessed, it might be best, however, to let them get their fix from behind a thick piece of glass in an aquarium. And Australia has its fair share of world-class aquariums and underwater attractions, from Sydney's famous aquarium at Darling Harbour — which has one of Australia's largest collections of sharks in captivity — to lesser known but just as interesting attractions like Seahorse World in Tasmania.
While
Sydney Aquarium's large shark population in the open oceanarium is a huge drawcard, kids also love the cute fairy penguins, octopus and cuttlefish inhabitants of the Great Australian Bight. Another favourite is the underwater tunnels in the seal sanctuary which give visitors a close-up view of these playful creatures as they race through the water at full speed. But for a real hands-on experience, you can't go past the aquarium's two interactive touch pools, which are a big hit with kids.
Just across the harbour at
Oceanworld Manly, you can expect to see all the usual attractions, however braver souls can take the plunge on a Shark Dive Xtreme adventure, where you spend 30 minutes getting up close and personal with huge grey nurse sharks as well as stingrays, turtles and moray eels. Visitors to the Melbourne Aquarium can also experience the adrenaline rush of coming face-to-face with a shark, when they take the plunge inside its 2.2 million-litre oceanarium.
One of the country's most impressive underwater experiences has to be
Sea World's Shark Bay, the world's largest manmade lagoon system for sharks. The two-level exhibit provides viewing both above-water and underwater through three large windows, allowing visitors to come face-to-face with the large sharks, stingrays and a range of exotic tropical fish without getting wet.
If you are 14 or over, you can join a qualified Shark Bay diver for the ultimate shark encounter and shark feeding session. Divers enter the acrylic cage in the Shark Lagoon where they see the sharks, including Tiger sharks, being fed.
As long as you are 10 or over, you can join the tamer snorkel adventure in Shark Bay's Reef Lagoon. This will see you swimming with smaller whitetip and blacktip reef sharks.
If interaction with less fearsome creatures is more your kind of activity, then Sea World also offers a Seal Aqua Adventure and a number of dolphin adventures for both kids and adults.
Over on the west coast, the
Busselton Jetty Underwater Observatory is one of WA's most popular eco-tourism locations and has been described as one of
Australia's greatest artificial reefs. Located 1.8 kilometres from shore at the end of the jetty, visitors descend eight metres beneath the water's surface and see the amazing corals and fish life through 11 viewing windows.
Seahorses
If your kids prefer their sea creatures of a less daunting size, there are two great attractions that will show you all you ever wanted to know about the secret lives of seahorses.
Seahorse World at Beauty Point, Tasmania, claims to have more seahorses on display than anywhere else in the world and has a seahorse farm with fish feeding on every tour. The Seahorse Farm at Port Lincoln, South Australia, also offers educational tours where you can view several species of seahorse and seadragon.
For more information, visit:
Tours of the Sea Horse Farm in Port Lincoln can be booked by phoning 1800 629 911.
First published in
Out and About with Kids
